Personal best

When sports icon Lance Armstrong – who beat cancer and went on to win the Tour de France cycling event for a record-breaking seven times – was stripped of his victory titles after a test showed the use of performance-enhancing drugs the news shocked his worldwide fan following – which includes not only sportspeople but also cancer patients for whom his triumph over the ‘emperor of maladies’ is an inspirational morale-booster. Armstrong’s case once again raised the controversial question about the use of drugs and other artificial stimulants by athletes to enhance their performance in the sporting arena.

All sports organisations ban the use of stimulants which are deemed to be subversive of the fundamental practice of fair play and the pursuit of excellence on a metamorphically level playing field. The use of artificial stimulants is considered to be unethical, and tantamount to ‘rigging’.

But just how valid is such a viewpoint in today’s world of unrelenting competition in all spheres of life? In sports, contestants have lived up to the Olympic motto of ‘Citius, Altius, Fortius’ (Faster, higher, stronger) by breaking previous records in all disciplines.

Much of this has to do with better nutrition and healthcare that have, by and large, benefited the general population in terms of physical development. Scientific training techniques have also contributed to better sporting performances. Added to this have been technological innovations – like the use of graphite instead of wood to make tennis racquets or pole-vaulting poles – which have given today’s athletes a significant edge over their counterparts of years gone by.

Is the use of technology-enhanced sports equipment unethical and subversive of the sporting spirit? Pioneering mountaineers wouldn’t use oxygen tanks as they felt that it would be ‘unfair’ and detract from the ‘purity’ of the exercise. The use of oxygen tanks in mountaineering is now standard practice, and has enabled many sportspeople to scale heights they otherwise wouldn’t have been able to do. Are oxygen tanks unethical?

It’s not just in the world of sporting activity that increasing competition and the constant compulsion to perform better and better put pressure on people to seek out whatever advantage they can find to improve their performance. Such pressure often begins very early, particularly in India, where schoolchildren are driven – sometimes with tragic results – to do whatever it is that needs to be done in order to score better than their batchmates or be left behind, once and for all, in the marks-dominated rat race that passes for an educational system in this country.

Are crammer courses and tutorials specially devised to help students emerge as ‘toppers’ in exams ‘unethical’ in any way? What about the use of amphetamines and other stimulants that many students use to keep awake so that they can study (learn by rote?) through the night, and so steal a march on their peers? Are black coffee and keep-awake pills ‘unethical’?

Whichever way you choose to answer such questions, there’s one thing that seems beyond argument. And that is that we can ban whatever ‘artificial stimulants’ we like, in sports or anywhere else. But it’s impossible to ban the most powerful stimulant of all: the stimulant of ceaseless competitiveness which over evolutionary history has made the human species what we are today, for good or ill.

DISCLAIMER : Views expressed above are the author's own.

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Author

A former associate editor with the Times of India, Jug Suraiya writes two regular columns for the print edition, Jugular Vein, which appears every Friday, and Second Opinion, which appears on Wednesdays. He also writes the script for three cartoon strips. Two are in collaboration with Ajit Ninan, Like That Only which appears twice a week on Wednesday and Saturday and Power Point which appears on the Edit page of Times of India every Thursday. He also does a joint daily cartoon strip which appears online in collaboration with Partho Sengupta. His blog takes a contrarian view of topical and timeless issues, political, social, economic and speculative.

A former associate editor with the Times of India, Jug Suraiya writes two regular columns for the print edition, Jugular Vein, which appears every Friday, a. . .